Nature books: Five of the best

Beautifully written and full of fascinating detail, these nature books will transport you around Britain – and remind us all why countryside and coastline need to be treasured and preserved

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1. MEADOWLAND (Black Swan, £14.99 hardback, £8.99 paperback)

John Lewis-Stempel chronicles a year spent among the Herefordshire meadows of his youth, particularly among the flora and fauna of Lower Meadow overlooking the Eccsley River. From descriptions of the first cowslips to haymaking and grazing, his exquisite prose captures the changes, as well as the lives of the animals that inhabit the grass and the soil beneath – the badgers, foxes and rabbits – and the skylarks and curlews in the sky above. He was moved to write the book after returning to his home county, where his family can trace back its roots to 900 years ago. "I was shocked by how much Herefordshire had changed," he says. "It was the drive towards intensive agriculture." An evocative read that reminds us why what is left of these fragile, beautiful habitats must be cherished and protected.

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2. FIELD NOTES FROM THE EDGE (Ebury, £14.99 hardback)

Combining a naturalist's eye for observation with a poet's ear for the lyrical, Paul Evans, the acclaimed writer of the Guardian's Country Diary, journeys through Britain's secret wildernesses, the in-between spaces of nature such as mudflats, clifftops and caves. Here he seeks out the wildlife and plants that demand our attention, while also intertwining thoughts on history and the environment. His argument that we need to strike a balance between cultivating our landscape and allowing a wilder beauty to flourish is a powerful one.

3. H IS FOR HAWK (Jonathan Cape, £14.99 hardback, £8.99 paperback)

As a child Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer and read all the classic books, including T.H. White's masterful The Goshawk. When her father died with no warning, she struggled to put her life back together. The road to recovery involved the acquisition of a goshawk called Mabel and a year-long plan to tame and train her to hunt. This book charts both her grief and the hard-won trust that develops between hawk and human. Macdonald's style is arresting and powerful, such as this description of a winter landscape outside Cambridge: "Cow parsley. Knapweed. Wild burdock… Yellowhammers chipping in the hedges… The maritime light of this island, set as it is under a sky mirrored and uplit by sea". Poetic and intriguing.

One of our finest nature writers, and author of Crow Country, Birds & People and Birds Britannica, Mark Cocker looks in details at his home parish in Norfolk's Yare Valley. Distilled into a 12-month cycle, this fascinating book explores his relation with the East Anglian landscape, and how all wildlife is vital to our sense of wellbeing. Mindful observation is at its heart: "If the flycatcher goes completely no human life will end, no enterprise fail, and many will not even notice, but when this little pagan deity is gone one irreplaceable shade of colour will pass from the earth's register." The song of the mistle thrush in November fills him with hope: "Recall that this glorious motif has been passed on since the retreat of the ice. It is a song from long before the idea of England, older even than this island itself." A thought-provoking read.

Published to mark the 50th anniversary of the National Trust's Enterprise Neptune (a campaign to save the most precious stretches of coast from caravan parks and power lines), this includes Patrick Barkham's portraits of his walks past key coastal sights and his thoughts on past, present and future. He revisits the sand dunes and salt marshes of Scolt Head Island off the Norfolk coast where he holidayed as a boy; on the sea-coal coast of Durham he finds that nature has been restoring itself – the sands are no longer black, fish are returning and seaweed and mussels are appearing on the rocks. His descriptions are supplemented with snatches of history, biography, botany and ornithology, while each chapter ends with practical information on how to reach the places he has visited. A must for anyone with a love of the sea.

Look out for Patrick's new series about islands beginning in the January issue of Country Living magazine.